New Spring: The Graphic Novel
256
New Spring: The Graphic Novel
256eBookIllustrated (Illustrated)
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Overview
In the last few years before his death, Robert Jordan worked closely with Chuck Dixon and Mike Miller on the graphic adaptation of New Spring.
The eight full-color issues of New Spring, released between 2005 and 2010, tell the story of the search for the infant Dragon Reborn and of the adventures of Moiraine Damodred, a young Aes Sedai, and Lan Mandragoran, the uncrowned king of a long-dead nation. Adapted by noted comics writer Chuck Dixon with the full cooperation of Robert Jordan, and illustrated by artists Mike Miller and Harvey Tolibao, New Spring will delight any of Robert Jordan's millions of readers.
Tor is proud to collect all eight issues of New Spring in a single volume, which will also include developmental art, script pages, and correspondence between Jordan and Dixon.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466840485 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tor Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 06/25/2013 |
| Series: | Wheel of Time Graphic Novels |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Sales rank: | 934,650 |
| File size: | 116 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
ROBERT JORDAN (1948-2007) is best known for his internationally bestselling epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time®, which has sold over 40 million copies in North America and is currently being adapted for the screen. A native of Charleston, Jordan graduated from The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, with a degree in physics. He served two tours in Vietnam with the U.S. Army and received multiple decorations for his service.
CHUCK DIXON, writer of New Spring: The Graphic Novel, has written many comics for DC, Marvel, and most other major comics publishers, and is considered one of the best writers of Batman of the last decade. Dixon worked closely with Robert Jordan on the adaptation of New Spring.
MIKE MILLER has worked for Marvel and DC and on other Dabel Bros. projects, including The Hedge Knight.
HARVEY TOLIBAO draws Darkhawk for Marvel Comics and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for Dark Horse Comics.
ROBERT JORDAN (1948-2007) is best known for his internationally bestselling epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time®, which has sold over 100 million copies worldwide and is currently being adapted for the screen. A native of Charleston, Jordan graduated from The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, with a degree in physics. He served two tours in Vietnam with the U.S. Army and received multiple decorations for his service.
Chuck Dixon is a comic book writer best known for his long runs on several Batman titles in the 1990’s for DC Comics. Throughout his prolific career, Dixon has written for Evangeline (Comico Comics), The Savage Sword of Conan, The Punisher War Journal (Marvel Comics), Robin, Nightwing, Detective Comics (DC Comics), and Simpsons Comics (Bongo Comics). Dixon worked closely with Robert Jordan on the graphic adaptation of New Spring and with Jordan’s estate on The Eye of the World graphic novel.
Mike Miller has worked for Marvel and DC and on Dabel Bros. projects such as The Hedge Knight.
Harvey Tolibao draws Darkhawk for Marvel Comics and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for Dark Horse Comics.
Date of Birth:
October 17, 1948Date of Death:
September 16, 2007Place of Birth:
Charleston, South CarolinaPlace of Death:
Charleston, South CarolinaEducation:
B.S. in physics, The Citadel, 1974Website:
http://www.tor.com/Jordan/Read an Excerpt
NEW SPRING
THE NOVELBy Robert Jordan
Tor
ISBN: 0-7653-0629-8Chapter One
A cold wind gusted through the night, across the snow-covered land where men had been killing one another for the past three days. The air was crisp, if not so icy as Lan was accustomed to for this time of year. It was still cold enough for his steel breastplate to carry the chill through his coat, and his breath to mist in front of his face when the wind did not whip it away. The blackness in the sky was just beginning to fade, the thousands of stars like the thick-scattered dust of diamonds slowly dimming. The fat sickle of the moon hung low, giving barely light to make out the silhouettes of the men guarding the fireless camp in the sprawling copse of oak and leatherleaf. Fires would have given them away to the Aiel. He had fought the Aiel long before this war began, on the Shienaran Marches, a matter of duty to friends. Aielmen were bad enough in daylight. Facing them in the night was as close to staking your life on the toss of a coin as made no difference. Of course, sometimes they found you even without fires.Resting a gauntleted hand on his sword in its scabbard, he pulled his cloak back around himself and continued his round of the sentries through calf-deep snow. It was an ancient sword, made with the One Power before the Breaking of the World, during the War of the Shadow, when the Dark One had touched the world for a time. Only legends remained of that Age, except perhaps for what the Aes Sedai might know, yet the blade was hard fact. It could not be broken and never needed sharpening. The hilt had been replaced countless times over the long centuries, but not even tarnish could touch the blade. Once, it had been the sword of Malkieri kings. Once.
The next sentry he came to, a short stocky fellow in a long dark cloak, was leaning back against the trunk of a heavy-limbed oak, his head slumped on his chest. Lan touched the sentry's shoulder, and the man jerked upright, almost dropping the horn-and-sinew horsebow gripped in his gloved hands. The hood of his cloak slid back, revealing his conical steel helmet for an instant before he hastily pulled the cowl up again. In the pale moonlight, Lan could not make out the man's face behind the vertical bars of his face-guard, but he knew him. Lan's own helmet was open, in the style of dead Malkier, supporting a crescent moon above his forehead.
"I wasn't sleeping, my Lord," the fellow said quickly. "Just resting a moment." A copper-skinned Domani, he sounded embarrassed, and rightly so. This was not his first battle, or even his first war.
"An Aiel would have wakened you by slitting your throat or putting a spear through your heart, Basram," Lan said in a quiet voice. Men listened closer to calm tones than to the loudest shouts, so long as firmness and certainty accompanied the calm. "Maybe it would be better without the temptation of the tree so near." He refrained from adding that even if the Aiel did not kill him, the man risked frostbite standing in one place too long. Basram knew that. Winters were nearly as cold in Arad Doman as in the Borderlands.
Mumbling an apology, the Domani respectfully touched his helmet and moved three paces out from the tree. He held himself erect, now, and peered into the darkness. He shifted his feet, too, guarding against blackened toes. Rumor said Aes Sedai were offering Healing, closer to the river, injuries and sickness gone as if they had never been, but without that, amputation was the usual way to stop a man losing his feet to gangrene, and maybe his legs as well. In any case, it was best to avoid becoming involved with Aes Sedai more than absolutely necessary. Years later you could find she had tied strings to you just in case she might have need. Aes Sedai thought far ahead, and seldom seemed to have much care for who they used in their schemes or how. That was one reason Lan avoided them.
How long would Basram's renewed alertness last? Lan wished he had the answer, but there was no point in taking the Domani to task further. All of the men he commanded were bone weary. Likely every man in the army of the grandly named Great Coalition - sometimes it was called the Grand Coalition, or the Grand Alliance, or half a dozen other things, some worse than uncomplimentary - likely every last man was near exhaustion. A battle was hot work, snow or no snow, and tiring. Muscles could knot from tension even when you had the chance to stop for a time, and the last few days had offered small chance to stop very long.
The camp held well over three hundred men, a full quarter of them on guard at any given time - against Aiel, Lan wanted as many eyes on watch as he could manage - and before he had gone another two hundred paces, he had had to wake three more, one asleep on his feet without any support at all. Jaim's head was even up, and his eyes open. That was a trick some soldiers learned, especially old soldiers like Jaim. Cutting off the gray-bearded man's protests that he could not have been asleep, not standing up straight, Lan promised to let Jaim's friends know if he found him sleeping again.
Jaim's mouth hung open for a moment, then he swallowed hard. "Won't happen again, my Lord. The Light sear my soul if it does!" He sounded sincere to his bones. Some men would have been afraid that their friends would drub them senseless for putting the rest in danger, but given the company Jaim kept, more likely he dreaded the humiliation of having been caught.
As Lan walked on, he found himself chuckling. He seldom laughed, and it was a fool thing to laugh over, but laughter was better than worrying over what he could not change, such as weary men drowsing on guard. As well worry about death. What could not be changed must be endured.
Abruptly, he stopped and raised his voice. "Bukama, why are you sneaking about? You've been following me ever since I woke." A startled grunt came from behind him. Doubtless Bukama had thought he was being silent, and in truth, very few men would have heard the faint crunching of his boots in the snow, yet he should have known Lan would. After all, he had been one of Lan's teachers, and one of the first lessons had been to be aware of his surroundings at all times, even in his sleep. Not an easy lesson for a boy to learn, but only the dead could afford oblivion. The oblivious soon became the dead, in the Blight beyond the Borderlands.
"I've been watching your back," Bukama announced gruffly, striding up to join him. "One of these black-veiled Aiel Darkfriends could sneak in and cut your throat for all the care you're taking. Have you forgotten everything I taught you?" Bluff and broad, Bukama was almost as tall as he, taller than most men, and wearing a Malkieri helmet without a crest, though he had the right to one. He had more concern for his duties than his rights, which was proper, but Lan wished he would not spurn his rights so completely.
When the nation of Malkier died, twenty men had been given the task of carrying the infant Lan Mandragoran to safety. Only five had survived that journey, to raise Lan from the cradle and train him, and Bukama was the last left alive. His hair was solid gray now, worn cut at the shoulder as tradition required, but his back was straight, his arms hard, his blue eyes clear and keen. Tradition infused Bukama. A thin braided leather cord held his hair back, resting in the permanent groove across his forehead it had made over the years. Few men still wore the hadori. Lan did. He would die wearing it, and go into the ground wearing that and nothing else. If there was anyone to bury him where he died. He glanced north, toward his distant home. Most people would have thought it a strange place to call home, but he had felt the pull of it ever since he came south.
"I remembered enough to hear you," he replied. There was too little light to make out Bukama's weathered face, yet he knew it wore a glower. He could not recall seeing any other expression from his friend and teacher even when he spoke praise. Bukama was steel clothed in flesh. Steel his will, duty his soul. "Do you still believe the Aiel are pledged to the Dark One?"
The other man made a sign to ward off evil, as if Lan had spoken the Dark One's true name. Shai'tan. They had both seen the misfortune that followed speaking that name aloud, and Bukama was one of those who believed that even thinking it drew the Dark One's attention. The Dark One and all the Forsaken are bound in Shayol Ghul, Lan recited the catechism in his head, bound by the Creator at the moment of creation. May we shelter safe beneath the Light, in the Creator's hand. He did not believe thinking that name was enough, but better safe than sorry when it came to the Shadow.
"If they aren't, then why are we here?" Bukama said sourly. And surprisingly. He liked to grumble, but always about inconsequential things or prospects for the future. Never the present.
"I gave my word to stay until the end," Lan replied mildly. Bukama scrubbed at his nose. His grunt might have been abashed this time. It was hard to be sure. Another of his lessons had been that a man's word must be as good as an oath sworn beneath the Light or it was no good at all.
The Aiel had seemed like a horde of Darkfriends when they suddenly spilled across the immense mountain range called the Spine of the World. They had burned the great city of Cairhien, ravaged the nation of Cairhien, and in the two years since, had fought through Tear and then Andor before reaching these killing fields, outside the huge island city of Tar Valon. In all the years since the nations of the present day had been carved out of Artur Hawkwing's empire, the Aiel had never before left the desert called the Waste. They might have invaded before that; no one could be sure, except maybe the Aes Sedai in Tar Valon, but, as so often with the women of the White Tower, they were not saying. What Aes Sedai knew, they held close, and doled out by dribbles and drops when and if they chose. In the world outside of Tar Valon, though, many men had claimed to see a pattern. A thousand years had passed between the Breaking of the World and the Trolloc Wars, or so most historians said. Those wars destroyed the nations that existed then, and no one doubted that the Dark One's hand had been behind them, imprisoned or not, as surely as it had been behind the War of the Shadow, and the Breaking, and the end of the Age of Legends. A thousand years from the Trolloc Wars until Hawkwing built an empire and that, too, was destroyed, after his death, in the War of the Hundred Years. Some historians said they saw the Dark One's hand in that war, too. And now, close enough to a thousand years after Hawkwing's empire died, the Aiel came, burning and killing. It had to be a pattern. Surely the Dark One must have directed them. Lan would never have come south if he had not believed that. He no longer did. But he had given his word.
He wriggled his toes in his turned-down boots. Whether or not it was as cold as he was used to, iciness burrowed into your feet if you stood too long in one place in snow. "Let's walk," he said. "I don't doubt I'll have to wake a dozen more men if not two." And make another round to wake others.
Before they could take a step, however, a sound brought them up short, and alert; the sound of a horse walking in the snow. Lan's hand drifted to his swordhilt, half consciously easing the blade in its sheath. A faint rasp of steel on leather came from Bukama doing the same. Neither feared an attack; Aiel rode only at great need, and reluctantly even then. But a lone horseman at this hour had to be a messenger, and messengers rarely brought good news, these days. Especially not in the night.
Horse and rider materialized out of the darkness following a lean man afoot, one of the sentries by the horsebow he carried. The horse had the arched neck of good Tairen bloodstock, and the rider was plainly from Tear as well. For one thing, the scent of roses came ahead of him on the wind, from the oils glistening on his pointed beard, and only Tairens were fool enough to wear scent, as if the Aiel had no noses. Besides, no one else wore those helmets with a high ridge across the top and a rim that cast the man's narrow face in shadow. A single short white plume on the helmet marked him an officer, an odd choice for a messenger, even an officer of low rank. He huddled in his high-cantled saddle and held his dark cloak tightly around him. He seemed to be shivering. Tear lay far to the south. On the coast of Tear, it never snowed so much as a single flake. Lan had never quite believed that, whatever he had read, until he had seen it for himself.
"Here he is, my Lord," the sentry said in a hoarse voice. A grizzled Saldaean named Rakim, he had received that voice a year back, along with a ragged scar that he liked to show off when drinking, from an Aiel arrow in the throat. Rakim considered himself lucky to be alive, and he was. Unfortunately, he also believed that having cheated death once, he would continue to do so. He took chances, and even when not drinking, he boasted about his luck, a fool thing to do. There was no point to taunting fate.
"Lord Mandragoran?" The rider drew rein in front of Lan and Bukama. Remaining in his saddle, he eyed them uncertainly. Their armor was unadorned, their coats and cloaks plain wool and somewhat worn. A little embroidery was a fine thing, but some southern men decked themselves out like tapestries. Likely under his cloak the Tairen wore a gilded breastplate and one of those coats with puffy sleeves striped in bright satin. His high boots were certainly embroidered in scrollwork that shone in the moonlight with the glitter of silver. In any case, the man went on with barely a pause for breath. "The Light burn my soul, I was sure you were the closest, but I was beginning to think I'd never find you. Lord Emares is following about five or six hundred Aiel with six hundred of his armsmen." He shook his head slightly. "Odd thing is, they're heading east. Away from the river. At any rate, the snow slows them as much as it does us, and Lord Emares thinks if you can place an anvil on that ridgeline they call the Hook, he can take them from behind with a hammer. Lord Emares doubts they can reach it before first light."
Lan's mouth tightened. Some of these southlanders had peculiar notions of polite behavior. Not dismounting before he spoke, not naming himself. As a guest, he should have named himself first. Now Lan could not without sounding boastful. The fellow had failed even to offer his lord's compliments or good wishes. And he seemed to think they did not know that east would be away from the River Erinin. Perhaps that was just carelessness in speech, but the rest was rudeness. Bukama had not moved, yet Lan laid a hand on his sword arm anyway. His oldest friend could be touchy.
The Hook lay a good league from the camp, and the night was failing, but he nodded.
Continues...
Excerpted from NEW SPRING by Robert Jordan Excerpted by permission.
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